Curcumin Extract

Curcumin (Curcuma longa), is the source of the spice Turmeric, frequently used in Indian cuisine. It is also used as a yellow food coloring and is used in curries and other spicy dishes in India. In approximately 50 years, it has been subjected to numerous trails and validated and clarified by science that it has several health benefits. When combined with green tea, the oxidant capabilities for this extract multiply exponentially.

Curcumin is an extract taken from the root of a plant in the ginger family. It is an ideal additive to cauliflower or fried tofu, and it helps to maintain a positive inflammation response with long term success. Research has now shown that it also supports optimal brain function, healthy joints, and a healthy cardiovascular system.

Even Iraq, like most of the third world countries, attempts to extract and study its anticancer activity. The study of anticancer activity of the curcumin and ethanolic extract were done in vivo on mice and in vitro on cell line. The extract showed a considerable anticancer activity against the cell line of human hepato cellular liver carcinoma. This study was titled as “Study the anticancer activities of athanolic curcumin extract” by Jasmin Hilo Naama, Ali A. Al-Temimi and Ahmed A. Hussain Al-Amiery at the Biotechnology Division, Department of Applied Science, University of Technology Kerala, India which was accepted on March 9, 2010.

The group says, in their Antioxidant activity section of their paper, “Curcumin is a good antioxidant and inhibits LPO in rat liver microsomes, erythrocyte membranes and brain homogenates. The LPO has a main role in the inflamemation, in heart diseases and in cancer. The antioxidant activity of curcumin could be mediated through antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase. Curcumin has been shown to serve as a Michael acceptor, reacting with glutathione and thioredoxin (Adams, 2005). Reaction of curcumin with these agents reduces intracellular GSH in the cells. The suppression of LPO by curcumin could lead to the suppression of inflammation. In fact, curcumin has been found to be at least ten times more active as an antioxidant than even vitamin E (Khopde, 1999). In curcumin, the phenolic and the methoxy group on the phenyl ring and the 1,3-diketone system seem to be important structural features that can contribute to these effects. Another fact proposed in the literature is that the antioxidant activity increases when the phenolic group with a methoxy group is at the ortho position (Motterlini et al., 2000).”

The group added that “The role of antioxidant is to remove free radical. One important mechanism through which this is achieved is by donating hydrogen to free radicals in its reduction to an unreactive species. Addition of hydrogen would remove the odd electron feature which is responsible for radical reactivity. The hydrogen-donating activity, measured using DPPH (1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrilhydrazyl) radicals as hydrogen acceptor, showed that there was a significant association could be found between the concentration of extract and percentage of inhibition. The acute toxicity of Curucmin and Ethanolic extract (applied on mice) was calculated by determination of LD50 value and it was 4.3 and 3.5 g/kg.”

They concluded that pure curcumin and the crude ethanolic curcumin extract have great potential in the prevention and cure of cancer.

This particular study of curcumin extract suggests that curcumin is the most powerful spice you have in your kitchen. People look up to this amazing results and everyone is not giving up their hopes because of this herb we just didn’t know what else was in it just until now.

One can purchase curcumin in capsule and liquid form, but it might be best taken in food particularly if one adds pepper because curcumin is better absorbed and shows higher levels in people’s blood serum.